mattysemo247

God, I remember all the HD-DVD vs Blu Ray stuff from those days. Everyone was losing their shit when Transformers was coming to HD DVD and not Blu Ray.

Adam Tyner

I'll hang my head in shame and confess to very much being on the HD DVD side of the argument too.

(Not really ashamed, although I was obviously mistaken. Neither format was fully baked at launch, but I do still feel that HD DVD was more ready for prime-time than Blu-ray was on day one, but those advantages were very short-lived. And I do think the threat of HD DVD strengthened Blu-ray in ways that might not have happened without that sort of competition.)

morriscroy

I suspect this may very well be the case.

Though was this ever officially disclosed by Sony in any of their financial statements from the mid-late 2000s era?

Or is this just the "common wisdom" or "folklore" which has been the party line for a long time in the video game console world? (I don't really follow the video game console rumor mills).

morriscroy

In those days, I was hoping hd-dvd would win. (Though I never purchased any hd optical discs until 2011).

My mentality had a lot to do with being very anti-Sony. Back in the day (circa 80s and 90s), I had several Sony devices which died after a few years of use (ie. walkmans, vhs, tvs, etc ...), just shortly after the warranty expired. So even back in the day, I never considered Sony to be a good product.

Dan

I never had a shirt, but I definitely remember Amir on AVS. Wow. Not coincidentally, he left MS in January 2008... right around the time Warner announced Blu-ray exclusivity (days before CES, wasn't it?)

Dan

It was the one and only time, after the PS3 launch, where HD DVD had a remote chance of beating Blu-ray in regard to weekly sales. Blu-ray just happened to have a massive sale that week (lots of 2 for 1, or buy 2 get 1 free sort of deals), so it didn't happen. I remember the common pro-HD-DVD argument was "Blu-ray may sell more discs per week, but HD DVD sells more discs per person" meaning the attach rate of HD DVD was higher. that shit didn't matter. Blu-ray wiped the floor with HD DVD every week until Warner gave up on HD DVD entirely. The Red2Blu trade in program was nice, though. Too bad Universal and Paramount never did the same.

And I just remembered about not just Transformers but Blades of Glory. That was a title that was manufactured on Blu-ray but when Paramount went HD DVD exclusive, the Blu-ray was cancelled and only released on HD DVD in stores. But one guy... somewhere... managed to come across a copy of the Blu-ray, and posted about it either here or on AVS, andso many people thought he was trolling. They demanded screenshots, menu shots, bitrate info, etc. It was wild.

Good times.

Anyway, back on topic...
UHD and Blu-ray are now doomed.

morriscroy

(At the risk of going further offtopic).

From an historical perspective, did laserdisc ever have a "laserdisc is now doomed" phase with tons of "doom talking" posts either on usenet or forum message boards?

ie. Was there ever a "Gizmo" vs. "Alan Smithee" type of counterparts, back in the day circa y2k?

Dan

^ I was only (partially) kidding...
But to answer your question, I'm not sure about that. I wasn't paying much attention then.
I DO remember Kevin Smith saying "Fuck DVD" on the Chasing Amy laserdisc commentary... a commentary that was ported over to the Criterion DVD.

stingermck

Same. I remember the day WB dropped HD DVD. I immediately put my entire collection of HD-DVD movies and player on eBay, and switched to Blu that day. Some people here thought I was crazy jump the gun, but the war was over that day

Adam Tyner

Sony didn't call out any specific components when noting the PS3's multi-billion dollar losses in those early years, IIRC. The estimates from iSuppli's teardowns was that the Xbox 360's plain ol' DVD optical drive was $19.45, while the Blu-ray drive in the PS3 at launch was estimated at $125. Blu-ray players in those early months were considerably more expensive than HD DVD players as well, so it's believable.

From what I remember, the general reception to DVD before it launched was more of a dismissive "ugh, whatever". The early demos were pretty lousy. I wasn't heavily involved in those communities back then (I was in college at the time, and I hadn't touched my family's ancient Laserdisc player -- we got it in 1984! -- for a year or two when DVD started to be more and more talked about), and I'm not sure how much I trust my memory from way back then anyway, but I seem to recall that the reactions were more about DVD dragging down the standards of quality. It didn't seem to be widely believed among enthusiasts that DVD could outclass Laserdisc, at least prior to the format's launch. The sentiment felt more like Laserdisc was the enthusiast format, while DVD would be a severely compromised, mass-market format.

BuckNaked2k

I remember the HD DVD days as well. It was my format of choice out-of-the-gates. I thought it was superior because discs had no region coding, and I could buy from all over the world. Blu-ray was region-locked and had all of that Profile 1, 2, and Blu-ray Live stuff going on….what was all that about?

I also didn’t like the fact that Sony owned the entire entertainment vertical chain from the Studio right down to home playback, with their very own proprietary disc format.

stvn1974

I sat on the sidelines while the HD DVD vs BD war went on laughing at all of the vitriol from both sides. I didn't even intend to get in BD once it won but I asked for a bunch of DVDs as Christmas presents one year and got them all on blu-ray with a player from my parents. Not falling for 4K, 8K or 1596K.

PhantomStranger

For anyone wondering, Amir started up his own audio forum and mostly reviews high-end DACs these days on it.

Josh Z

Must we really relive the Format War again? In those days, talk of Blu-ray "wiping the floor with HD DVD" actually amounted to 100 HD DVD copies sold vs. 200 Blu-ray copies of a given title. Sales of both formats were miniscule for most titles, and boasting that Blu-ray had double the sales was laughable when the number of units was so small. Blu-ray didn't start to gain any actual traction on the market until well after the Format War was over.

Josh Z

In 1996, the Laserdisc store I frequented (Laser Craze on Newbury Street in Boston) closed shop entirely at the first announcement of DVD, which didn't wind up debuting for another year. They were a small operation catering to a niche market, and the fear of having to replace their entire inventory with a new format was enough to scare the owners into calling it a day.

Dan

Of course not, we're just reminiscing. I was all in on the HD DVD side until only a few months before its demise. When you say the above, "100 HD DVD copies sold vs. 200 Blu-ray copies of a given title" it sounds like you're talking about any title released by Warner or Paramount (the only two studios that, at a given time, were releasing on both formats), and I don't disagree with your point at all, but when I said "Blu-ray wiped the floor with HD DVD" what I meant was total sales, regardless of the title, were always higher on the BD side every week. It may have been dozens higher, or hundreds higher, or thousands higher, but always higher. That was my only point there. As hard as HD DVD tried (and Transformers was the biggest push by far), HD DVD never "won" a single week after the PS3 came out. That perception mattered at the time, regardless of how big the unit numbers really were.

I don't disagree with anything else you've said, and I don't think we necessarily disagree at all, honestly. You're right that when the numbers were so small (in the hundreds), it was very easy to make it all sounds "bigger" than it really was. The Blu-ray side absolutely used that perception to their advantage. In retrospect, it was all minuscule and laughable, I agree, and none of my comments were meant to suggest otherwise.

Alan Smithee

There was a LOT of that on the alt.video.laserdisc newsgroup. After seeing how compression-riddled satellite TV and videoCDs were, I swore that digital video would NEVER look good and vowed never to buy into DVD. It was frustrating enough that there was so little retail support for laserdiscs, but when DVD was announced some stores stopped carrying them- not because DVDs were outselling them (they hadn't even come out yet) but because they were GOING TO BE coming out shortly and would presumably be better, but with nobody having actually seen them there was no telling how they'd be. My fear was that laserdisc would be killed off by an inferior format with better marketing- remember also that many early DVD titles were 4x3 pan and scan as well, when letterboxing had become standard on laserdisc by then. There was also the threat that DVDs would be rental priced like VHS tapes were (about $100 list price), thankfully that never happened. When the first DVD players were out, for several weeks there weren't even any movies available to play on them, only the in-store demo discs- and they truly looked awful. (I have many of those and have since found they look OK at home however, with a properly adjusted picture.)

One of the first people I'd met online (I talked to him on the phone a lot but never actually met him- he's since passed on) was already a long-time laserdisc fan and also swore never to buy into DVD, but one day he told me that he had caved and got a player and said it was a great format with "NO" digital artifacts. That got me to buy a combo DVD/Laserdisc player, and I then admitted to being impressed with the format.

BTW what do you mean by the "Gizmo vs. Alan Smithee" thing? I don't remember anyone online back in the day being completely gung-ho about DVD, but remember that someone commented at me that I WOULD eventually buy a DVD player and that he wanted a Polaroid photo of me buying it. I lost track of him by the time I finally got my player, but no pictures were taken.

kahuna

Wow I forgot about that newsgroup. I use to participate in that newsgroup a lot. I also believe I sold a lot of my Laserdiscs in that newsgroup or another one.

Sonny Corinthos

I was on the HD-DVD side as well and really thought it would come out on top. I had a bunch of movies on that format, and when Blu-Ray won the war, I think I wound up donating my collection to Goodwill because I could not find anyone that would buy them.

Josh Z

I was very resistant of DVD at first. The initial batch of discs were pretty crappy. It took a while for the format to find its footing.

Funny how history repeated itself with the launch of Blu-ray a decade later.

slop101

I'm surprised they never made TVs where you can just insert a blu-ray into the side of the TV to play, easy peasy. Shouldn't cost them much more to implement.

Alan Smithee

BuckNaked2k

Wow, I forgot about Newsgroups!

morriscroy

Basically a curmudgeon vs. eternal optimist type of dynamic.

Heh. This person sounds like an "Alan Smithee" or "eternal optimist" from 20+ years ago.

Why So Blu?